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In view of the high-profile controversy over Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-nominated American Sniper, it’s interesting to note that wartime and peacetime sniper themes have defined a number of previous movies.
Like the Eastwood film, several were taken from real life and all involved snipers firing high-powered rifles from long distances. Some were politically motivated, some were paid assassins and others were mentally unbalanced. Here are 10 great ones in no particular order.
1. Enemy at the Gates (2001)
A stunning true tale of German and Russia snipers going head-to-head with telescopic sights amidst urban rubble at the height of World War II. Stars Jude Law as the Russian sharpshooter and Ed Harris as his German foe.
2. The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
John Frankenheimer directed this story of a former POW brainwashed into assassinating a presidential candidate during the party convention in Madison Square Garden. Angela Lansbury was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey co-star.
3. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Lewis Milestone’s memorable anti-war film concludes with a disillusioned German soldier (Lew Ayres) shot by a French sniper in the trenches as World War I was ending. Oscar winner for Best Picture and Best Director.
4. The Sniper (1952)
Perhaps the first urban film of the genre, this moody thriller stars Arthur Franz as a deranged young man who shoots women with a surplus Army rifle, prompting a police manhunt in hilly San Francisco. Realistic and troubling.
5. Suddenly (1954)
Frank Sinatra plays a twisted, ex-Army hit-man paid to kill the president with a Russian sniper rifle from a hilltop house in a small California town.
6. Dirty Harry (1972)
Clint Eastwood’s first in his popular series about a bad-ass San Francisco detective. Here, he’s after a psychotic, long-range serial sniper (Andy Robinson) whose first victim was a priest. Eastwood and Robinson are equally smarmy.
7. Day of the Jackal (1973)
Edge-of-the-seat thrills as a gun-for-hire (Edward Fox) paid by French dissidents nearly assassinated French president Charles De Gaulle in Paris with a specially built rifle 13 months before JFK was killed. Crackling suspense.
8. The Parallax View (1974)
Warren Beatty plays a newspaper reporter out to unravel the sniper assassination of a presidential candidate from atop the Space Needle in Seattle. He pays the ultimate price after witnessing the sniper murder of another political figure.
9. The Deadly Tower (1975)
A youthful Kurt Russell portrays sniper Charles Whitman, who systematically killed 13 and wounded 33 at the University of Texas in Austin in 1966 before being killed by a Mexican-American Texas Ranger (Richard Yniquez).
10. Twilight’s Last Gleaming (1977)
A Disgraced Air Force general (Burt Lancaster) breaks jail with two pals (Paul Benjamin and Burt Young), seizes a U.S. missile pad and threatens to launch against Russia if his demands aren’t met. The president (Charles Durning) arrives and is killed, along with the convicts, by concealed Air Force snipers.
